Colorado Newsline: While efforts to ban books in certain genres have increased across the country as of late, Colorado has also seen a few book-ban efforts — but not nearly as many as the rest of the U.S. 

Nicolle Davies, assistant commissioner of the Colorado State Library, noted that Colorado is a local-control state, so the state library itself doesn’t directly deal with book bans or challenges. But local libraries are supposed to report to the state any challenges to material the libraries offer, and the state tracks the challenges. In 2021, the state had 20 challenges reported, the majority of which related to LGBTQ communities. This number was double the amount of challenges reported in 2020.

Jamie LaRue currently serves as executive director of Garfield County Libraries, but spent three years at the helm of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom and 24 years with Douglas County Libraries. In his time at Douglas County he said he got about 250 challenges, which he described as “an attempt to either remove or restrict access to some library resource, so it could be a book, could be a movie, could be a periodical, it could be music CD, could be an exhibit could be a speaker, all kinds of stuff.”

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